


You Could Smile (Not Today, Tomorrow Maybe)

by shiptoomuch



Series: 30 McKirk AUs [11]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Depression, Happy Ending, M/M, Previous Abusive Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiptoomuch/pseuds/shiptoomuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they meet, Jim is living in a one room apartment with a kid who barely speaks english. It’s crummy, just two mattresses on opposite sides of the room and a guitar stand by one of them. They eat when they can and Jim works his hardest to make money for them to move out.</p><p>But then he meets a stranger. It’s been a long shift at the cafe and he’s barely got enough for rent and he meets this med student just about to finish his residency and he smiles at him.</p><p>Smiles at Jim like he’s the sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Could Smile (Not Today, Tomorrow Maybe)

**Author's Note:**

> i really love this.   
> I'm actually proud of it.

When they meet, Jim is living in a one room apartment with a kid who barely speaks english. It’s crummy, just two mattresses on opposite sides of the room and a guitar stand by one of them. They eat when they can and Jim works his hardest to make money for them to move out.

But then he meets a stranger. It’s been a long shift at the cafe and he’s barely got enough for rent and he meets this med student just about to finish his residency and he smiles at him.

Smiles at Jim like he’s the sun.

Jim is afraid, of course. The last guy to smile at him like that brought him to this city and left him alone on the streets with broken ribs and a broken heart.

“What’s wrong, kid?” He apparently notices that Jim is uncomfortable, because he actually looks worried.

So Jim does the natural, logical thing and runs away as fast as he can. His tray crashes on the ground and he knows that he’ll be fired for sure now so he’ll have to move out of his apartment but he can’t be around pretty boys who smile at him like he has a chance of doing something besides working in a cafe and playing guitar on street corners.

So he runs and runs and almost gets all the way home when someone grabs his arm and pulls him back. The tears on his face suddenly become real and wet and cold. He fights against the grip because suddenly it’s Colin again and he can’t breathe. “Please, just let me go.”

The grip loosens a little but he still can’t get free. He turns to the person holding him and his breath catches because it’s the guy from the cafe. He followed him and he doesn’t look like he wants to eat Jim alive.

He looks genuinely worried. Jim pulls, only halfheartedly this time. “Why did you run?” The stranger’s hazel eyes bore into him and Jim can’t escape.

Of course he can’t. His life is just one big no-win scenario. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just...freak out.” He shrugs and finally gets his arm back. “It’s no big deal except that this time it made me lose my job.”

It all really starts with “Let me buy you lunch.”

-

Jim tells Chekov about the boy with hazel eyes. He tells him about how he chased him down the street and bought him lunch. He tells the eighteen year old kid about how he listened when Jim [unwillingly, he just couldn’t seem to stop] told him his story. 

He tells him that his name is Leonard and for some reason that name sounds like a beginning and an ending. His eyes shine with hope as he talks but inside he feels scared out of his mind and he needs to run, run, run away as fast as he can because falling in love doesn’t work like that.

Chekov obviously thinks he’s an idiot for falling in a day because he knows what happened last time: knows how Jim still wakes up with nightmares and can’t get out of bed in the morning because thinking about it makes it hurt so much worse. He doesn’t say anything, though, only smiles and listens and offers up a few heavily accented words of encouragement before heading off for his own job. “Don’t worry about rent this month, I got a bit of a raise so I should be able to handle it.” Are the Russian’s parting words and it makes Jim feel guilty.

He’s putting a strain on their already difficult situation and he’s distracted by a stupid hazel eyed boy.

Jim’s phone rings and he just stares at it. It rings and rings and rings and he wants to throw it out of the window because he knows who it is, knows that it’s Leonard and that he’ll get distracted and fall in love again. Love has never treated him well, though. Love has always put him through the ringer and left him scarred and scared and broken.

So he picks up the phone because that’s the logical thing to do after that thought process. “Hello?”

“Jim, I think I need to see you again.”

He wonders why it feels like a promise.

-

It isn’t easy and it isn’t shiny, bright, happy, wonderful love. It’s jilted and terrible but still wonderful. It’s uneven and the timing is off but there’s still the promise of the timing being right someday.

So Jim stays until he runs away and then he stays away until Leonard finds him again. He might say words meant to be knives but Leonard always pulls him back with the strength that ten thousand men could never have.

Jim wonders when the other shoe is going to drop, when Leonard is going to break and hurt him just like Colin did. Just like every other person did.

Jim’s hair is too long and too messy and he didn’t care before, but he knows Leonard must because everyone has always cared. He doesn’t look in the mirror because dull eyes with purple swaths beneath them shine back where happiness used to be (or so they say.)

He doesn’t deserve even the most broken love, and he knows it. “Why don’t you ever leave me alone?”

Leonard smiles at him sadly across his kitchen table. (Because he actually has a kitchen.) He pushes a small white cardboard box towards Jim and says the words that speak truths Jim doesn’t want to hear. “Because you don’t want me to.”

The statement is the single most honest thing he’s ever heard. If Jim really wanted Leonard to leave, the hazel eyed boy would be gone because Jim wanted it.

Inside the box is a key to the apartment. “You don’t have to move in but I want you to keep it.”

So he doesn’t move in. He does use it sometimes, though. When he’s scared that night will bring nightmares about Colin. He ends up curled up on Leonard’s sofa.

He’ll wake up with a blanket over him and Leonard on the floor next to him.

-

“I think you could smile.” Comes out a scared confession, a whispered secret in the dead of night. Jim hears it across the two feet that feels like a gaping void between them. “You’ve got a good face for smiling.”

Jim wants to laugh at it but he doesn’t because laughter means something different to Leonard than it means to him. To Leonard, his perfect boy, it means happiness and humor. It means letting go on a summer day with someone you love so much it hurts. 

To Jim, laughter is more like crying when the tears won’t come anymore. It means unbelievable expressions of naivety made by someone who never let themselves get hurt by a cold world.

So Jim doesn’t laugh, says, “Not today, Bones. I’m tired.” Because he is tired. And Leonard is his superstructure, his support even when he doesn’t want it. 

It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown but it doesn’t take any muscles to stare blankly at a fate you know must be coming soon.

So he opts for the third and reserves slightly lighted eyes for a hazel eyed boy who scowls at everyone but Jim. “Maybe I’ll smile tomorrow. For you.”

“Not for me, Jimmy.”

-

The first time Leonard comes to his ratty apartment, Jim screams at him. He yells at Leonard until he’s hoarse because he needs to leave leave leave this awful place not even Jim likes.

He was never supposed to find him.

All of Jim’s fears are realized in Leonard’s face that says, “Let me save you” and lips that utter, “You can’t live like this, Jim.”

Jim is angry because Leonard doesn’t even flinch at the way he screams and throws things at him. Doesn’t say a word, but holds him when he’s finally collapsed onto his bed in defeat.

“Let me get you out of here.” Is a whisper.

Jim would argue that Chekov needs him, but the kid’s going back to Russia in a week and keeps giving Jim looks that scream, yell, shout, “Get out of here!”

So Jim leaves the only home he’s had for years in search of a new one.

-

They almost never touch. Jim flinches when Leonard reaches toward him sometimes, and he hates himself because they live together but they have not been together. Jim hasn’t been able to come undone for a long time and he wants to for his perfect boy.

Leonard should be angry with Jim, he expects it but it never comes. He gets frustrated and his eyes cloud up sometimes, but he never lashes out, never covers Jim in purple, green, blue. He’ll brush their fingers together one day, hug him the next, kisses all the way to holding him late at night, fully clothed in their bed. Sometimes they have to start over because Jim gets scared again, but he always does it. Always comes back the next day to brush fingertips with a broken boy.

Jim lets himself breath one day and makes the first move. It isn’t big, but when he breathes deep and links his fingers with Leonard’s the hazel eyed boy shines like the sun.

-

“I love you.” It freezes him, shocked still on a winter afternoon that had seemed so wonderful.

Jim starts to wonder, “Why why why?” Why did Leonard suddenly feel the need to shatter the whole thing with stupid words that don’t mean anything?

Jim wonders if he’ll ever love Leonard like he loves him. Wonders how he could possibly overcome his broken heart, so broken it’s nothing more than gray dust in his chest.

Jim doesn’t even feel human some days.

-

“Jim.”

It’s the end, he’s sure of it. He’s too broken and he can’t even look at Leonard, a real doctor now, most days because he is so ashamed of himself. “God, Bones, I can’t do this. I don’t know why I thought even for a minute that I could. Everything in my life has been telling me that I can’t. You should just tell me to leave now.”

JIm stares at Leonard for the first time in a month and in that moment, he’s sure he loves him so much it hurts. He loves him and he thinks that maybe he’s broken him. Leonard might actually let him be gone forever this time. “No.”

Relief. “Okay.”

Leonard stares him daed in the eye like disappointment. Jim knows he knows what he was thinking just a moment ago. “Please don’t be scared of me, Jim.” His heart is on his sleeve; breaking in front of Jim. Because of Jim. “You don’t ever have to say it or even show it, but please don’t be afraid of me. I can’t do that.”

This lets Jim know (or at least he thinks he knows) that this cannot last. He knows that he will kill Bones soon. He ignores this knowledge because it hurts too much to bear. He should leave, but he knows he can’t let go of his Bones.

Leonard’s eyes burn into him so he has to look away, run away as fast as he can. This wasn’t how the night should’ve ended.

How everything in Jim’s life always ends.

His fault.

Broken.

-

When Bones brings him back again, Jim promises that he’ll never run again.

“You don’t have to say things you don’t mean, Jim. I don’t expect that from you.” Leonard sounds tired but the love still lingers faintly on the edges. Faint, but still there.

It is so important to Jim that he hear it, though, because Jim does mean it this time. He doesn’t want to run away anymore. He wants to be normal and stable for Leonard. 

“You have to want it for yourself. Not me, Jim.” The words hurt but they make sense more than that, so Jim starts looking in the mirror again.

And this time he doesn’t think about what he hates. He starts to think about what Leonard must see.

-

Jim doesn’t run again, and it’s a miracle to both of them. He cuts his hair to what it was before he came to this city.

Leonard still skirts around him like a scared animal but Jim tells him not to. “I’m trying to be better, Bones. Please, look at me.” He begs and tells it.

Leonard smiles a little and reaches out to pull Jim in. It still feels wrong to Jim to be loved like this but he knows now that maybe it isn’t. Maybe the person who loves you is supposed to make you feel better. “You didn’t ever have to change, Jim. I just wanted you to smile for me.”

“I’m broken and scared most of the time. I don’t know a lot and sometimes I can’t be in one piece for you but I’m learning that you know that and you don’t care.” Jim pulls out of Leonard’s embrace and meets his eyes. 

Leonard gasps because those eyes must be a brighter blue than they’ve ever been. “But I do know one thing. I need you more than anything else and I think you might need me too, even though it doesn’t make sense.”

Jim smiles and it’s strange because he almost doesn’t remember how.

Leonard laughs happily and for the first time in his life, Jim does too.

“I always knew you should smile.”

Jim glows.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback appreciated!  
> tumblr: fabtrek


End file.
